Media Economics Group – Blog

Published: January 24, 2011

In reintroducing its Fiesta model – which had been off U.S. streets for 32 years – Ford put social media, viral video, mobile advertising, and digital offerings front and center.

In “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo,” much of the content and the consumer engagement takes place via Facebook, Twitter, a branded You Tube channel, video content that’s ready for sharing, WAP and Pandora. The Fiesta – and the Ford brand – also have prime placement on a broad range of consumer-oriented websites, plus readypatumundo.com.

“In terms of digital and social media, this is the most aggressive campaign we’ve taken,” says Dave Rodríguez, multicultural marketing communications manager at Ford. “It was also a dramatic shift in strategy – to reach a bilingual audience that’s active in both English and Spanish versus traditional segments.”

The adventure, considered risky by some, has yielded positive results particularly as it relates to awareness, brand appeal and persuasion. It’s also served to educate Ford executives and its marketing team on how to effectively use digital media.

One challenge, notes Rodríguez, is the lack of a measurement threshold. While Hispanics’ usage and adoption rates of digital media are clear, difficulties remain when it comes to projecting and quantifying a campaign’s performance.

“We don’t have a good read on how high is up,” says Rodríguez. “This is part of the adventure that is digital in the Hispanic market.”

Developed by Zubi Advertising, Ford’s Hispanic agency of record, the “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo” campaign featured nearly 40 digital creative executions – most of them Flash banners on regular websites, others were static banners on WAP sites – according to data from HispanicWebMonitor™.

In addition to activity on internet portals such as MSN Latino, Telemundo.com, Terra.com, Univision.com, and Yahoo! En Español, the campaign was also present on sites popular with younger demographics. Of these, many feature bilingual content, often music-oriented – BoomOnline.com, HolaMun2.com, LaMusica.com, LATV.com, QuePasa.com and SiTV.com.

On the mobile front, HispanicMobileMonitor™ found that “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo” was present on Telemundo Móvil, Terra Mobile, Univision Móvil, and Yahoo! Mobile en Español.

Taking center stage in highlighting the Fiesta’s features – design, technology and fuel efficiency – are Ellie, a musician; Alex, an aspiring actor; and Xavi, a spoken-word artist. Each relates his or her own world to one of the Fiesta’s features and its accompanying message.

Consumers quickly connected with the characters, notes Rodríguez. Tracking of the viral videos and activity on Ford’s dedicated YouTube channel revealed 1.6 million views. Another big element was the whole connection with music, which Ellie showcased as a passion point with the Fiesta. The “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo” channel on Pandora delivered roughly 20,000 downloads.

“These results show that the viral strategy for getting people to engage and interact with the messaging was effective,” Rodríguez insists. “These numbers now become benchmarks for future campaigns.”

Keeping the 18-24 year-old target in mind, Zubi’s team created a language mixer that allows users to select the language for the readypatumundo website – Spanish, English or Spanglish to varying degrees.

The mixer, says Rodríguez, was a hit with consumers, with more than 500,000 using the feature. “That’s big volume in terms of people engaging with the site,” he adds. “It’s a major win; we offered the market something that was interesting.”

In the showrooms, early sales figures for the Fiesta show that more than 1,000 vehicles were sold to Hispanics in the first four months of the campaign. Full-year 2010 figures are still being calculated and Rodríguez is confident that the numbers will show increased traction among Latinos.

Buoyed by the results seen so far, the teams at Ford and Zubi are already laying the groundwork for the next phase of “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo” – a 2.0 version, one could say.

“We have this broad set of insights from the launch that now we can pick and choose what elements to sustain and determine how to improve those elements that haven’t generated the excitement or engagement we wanted,” says Rodríguez. “We don’t want to do a launch and leave, we want to sustain the dialogue with this market.”

The data and insights gleaned from “Ready Pa’ Tu Mundo” will also be put to work in development of Ford’s next project – the launch of the 2011 Focus. That campaign is forecast to debut in the second quarter of this year.

“Focus is the largest auto segment in the industry and the largest with Hispanics,” says Rodríguez. “We’ve got a lot to look forward to with that product.”

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Thanks for reading.

You can also read the article on HispanicMarketWeekly.com here: http://www.hispanicmarketweekly.com/article.cms?id=10983

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